


If you find it in your dreams, you can find it at your day job

by carpenter



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, Applied Physicist Headcanon, F/F, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:17:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8124943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpenter/pseuds/carpenter
Summary: Abby thought of her 20s as the decade of Erin.

After Erin leaves, Abby figures out her life again.





	1. Erin

**Author's Note:**

> I asked myself, "What does Abby actually do in the lab?" and this happened.
> 
> Thanks so much to my awesome beta, psocoptera, for convincing me I could write a 20-year backstory mini-epic and then painstakingly walking me through fixes for every section transition.

Abby thought of her 20s as the decade of Erin.

They'd graduated from college, and then both immediately headed to grad school, Erin to Princeton and Abby to Cornell. But in some ways, they were the closest they'd ever been during those years apart, because they were working on the book and (with the certainty of the naive and stupid, Abby thinks now) they knew they were onto something.

They had started writing the book in college, but they hadn't known the first thing about technical writing, about technical writing for a popular audience, or even about what audience they were writing for. Normally, even in grad school much less undergrad, an advisor would more or less own the book-writing process.

They eventually realised that, and spent a hilarious night in Erin's dorm room junior year, mixing vodka and juice and naming professors they might approach with a request for guidance or a coauthorship offer. "I'm a third-year student in your department, and I am writing a book about the physics of encounters with ghosts," one of them would start, and the other would chime in with an impersonation of the prof in question. Erin's deadpan "I'm sorry, did you say you'd brought the coffee?" (technically, this was unfair — physics was at least 14% women every year they were in school, and neither of them had ever actually been mistaken for department staff) warred with Abby's over-the-top "In all my 34 years of teaching, I have never been approached with such a ridiculous and offensive suggestion."

Abby remembered that night long after thinking about Erin had stopped being any fun. She guessed they had always known how the book project was going to end, and wondered what might have been different if they had admitted it to themselves from the start.

As Ph.D. students, they started learning about citations and style conventions, and Abby did a project for which she learned to typeset in LaTeX and store book source under version-control. They squirrelled their chapters away on a server Erin had access to courtesy of a friend named Tony, a CS major who had asked Erin out four times in college. They worked on the book between classes, other projects, dissertation research.

Abby smiled all day every time she got an e-mail from Erin telling her that she'd added some chapters or edits. Usually the e-mails had some other content too — hand-wringing about qualifying exams or TAing or how to encourage adorable freshmen physics majors not to give up, or details on Erin's last disastrous date with some guy who (inevitably) didn't actually read "I am a theoretical physicist" in her profile and then freaked out at the first sign that she knew something about anything. Abby didn't date — no one was offering, and her sexuality seemed permanently (uselessly) set to "Erin", so she just shrugged and pursued other things.

Erin called Abby in tears after her slightly-disastrous first thesis defense. Erin didn't say — it wasn't the kind of thing she'd admit even to her best friend — but Abby read between the lines that the advisor had said something to hit Erin right in her always-present need for validation, not just "This needs another few months of work" but "This is fundamentally unserious" or "What were you thinking?" That's obviously not what her advisor meant — Abby had been hearing about Erin's dissertation topic from day one and knew it was both fascinating in its own right and good for three or four publishable papers if not a substantial fraction of a book. But try telling that to Erin's insecurity.

Abby said, "Look, it's not that bad. You can fix this. Pack your notes and let's get out of town." They spent a week in a motel room in the Pocanos, cheap in the chilly November off-season. Erin worked through the legitimate 2/3 of the suggested corrections, and Abby glared pointedly every time she dragged her feet on writing her advisor for a clarification, until she had a plan to finish.

On the last night, Erin insisted on taking Abby out to the restaurant at the nice tourist hotel up the hill, dressed in their student-equivalent-of finery. "I honestly don't know what I would do without you, Abs," Erin said, her voice cracking a little. Abby's ears burned at how those words made her feel, and she covered it with a smile.

 

To Abby's lack-of-surprise, Erin's dissertation got back on track, and they were both slated to walk that spring. Erin said, "Oh, this is just silly, I wouldn't expect anyone to show up, I don't even know if I'm going myself," and Abby read "please come" between the lines, and drove down from Ithaca to make fun of Erin's mortarboard and the gown with the three stripes, and to take Dr. Erin Gilbert out for her first drink afterwards.

Two weeks later, it was Abby walking across the stage, self-conscious about all this time and effort and what she had to show for it. And it was Erin sitting in the audience with shining eyes, cheering for her oldest and best friend.

They spent the summer together in New York City, by design. Erin was starting a postdoc at NYU in the fall, and Abby had one lined up at Carnegie Mellon. They were both entering the world of academic physicists, and they were excited and apprehensive and wanted one more comfortable summer with an old friend.

And they wanted to finish the book. Abby knew Erin was too honest and conflicted to try to run the tenure rat-race in theoretical physics while working on this kind of side project. Erin was the one who had seen a ghost initially, but her scientific interests had wandered at Princeton. Abby's hadn't; she was non-methodically picking up a set of interests from E&M to biomechanics to a little bit of artificial intelligence, to try to build a real understanding of why and how spectral energy might exist. She was shameless about trying to collect boxtops she might be able to use and shrugging off questions about why, and the postdoc at CMU's new interdisciplinary physics center was in some ways just another set of leads. She knew her career and Erin's weren't going to coincide in the long term, but she wanted to write this book _with Erin_ , and that meant getting it wrapped up this summer.

It was a gorgeous summer, long days spent trading feedback on proofs and prose in their tiny apartment underneath the GWB, long nights at bars or off-off-Broadway shows. On the Fourth of July, Erin said, "I've kind of wanted to do this forever," and kissed Abby to the sound of fireworks booming from the Hudson. Abby's pulse thudded in her ears as she held her best friend, shocked and amazed and feeling like everything was coming together, was happening for a reason.

The next month floated by in a dream, and at the end of a string of late nights and relaxed mornings, they had finished the third draft of their book. Then Abby got the e-mail from Dr. Anderson.

Anderson was the principal investigator of the research group Abby was going to be joining — her boss in any meaningful sense. Rumor had it that he was kind of a jerk, but it was a prestigious group that would let her do the research she wanted to do, and she knew she was lucky.

The e-mail just said "Please come meet with me at your earliest convenience. I have some questions about your research," so Abby had to rent a car and drive to Pittsburgh. She hit a massive construction-related slowdown near I-81 and sat in an interstate-turned-parking-lot for an hour, wondering what the big emergency would turn out to have been. She supposed Anderson's e-mail had sounded a little ominous and she should be nervous, but honestly he was the kind of senior professor who just assumed he could say "swing by my office" and anyone would drive 300 miles for the privilege. Once Abby was settled into the department, she'd try to draw her lines a little more clearly, but for now it was better to make a good impression. The excessive traffic was in no way helping her do that. By the time she arrived she barely had time to run some cold water over her face before the meeting, much less find anything to eat.

Dr. Anderson pointed her to a chair, and handed her a printout of the nicely-typeset of table of contents of her and Erin's book. (She noticed that the copy he had was from the second draft, and a useless portion of her brain went on to calculate that he must have acquired it between 2.5 and 4 weeks ago, though it was from before they'd cut the neural networks section, and that meant... Enough.)

Abby refused to incriminate herself (this was meant to incriminate her, right?), waiting for Anderson to start talking, which he did. "I had a fascinating conversation last week with a local colleague. He said he'd gotten curious about some files he saw lying around on a shared server, and thought I might be interested in seeing what some misguided people do in the name of physics. I don't think he realised you were coming to my department, but obviously I thanked him very much for the information."

Abby thought this through. "Local colleague" was briefly mysterious, but it had to be Tony, who had landed a tenure-track job at Pitt last year. Abby held back a snort at the idea that he'd innocently stumbled over their book; she and Erin always used perfectly reasonable access control, the rat must have abused his privileges as the server owner.

Anderson cleared his throat. "I begin to understand your research interests a little better, Abigail. Electrical signatures of the brain. Fluid dynamics. An otherwise completely-incongruous coauthorship on the directional nature of time. All in service of utter nonsense. I can't think of anything you could possibly say to defend yourself, but I've been surprised before."

He paused, but honestly there was nothing Abby could say. She had no idea whether Tony's system administration tactics were actually illegal, but it didn't matter. At this stage in her career, Carnegie Mellon could decide to revoke Abby's offer of employment for any reason, or none at all.

Anderson continued. "I don't need to tell you that interdisciplinary departments struggle for respect in modern academia. I found out about this, so anyone else could too. There's nothing for you here now, and I would certainly caution any of our sibling institutions who were considering making you an offer. The department office will be in touch about returning your moving allowance."

Abby didn't hesitate before asking, for Erin. "Do you intend to publicize this?"

Anderson paused briefly. "If you don't make a fuss, I see no need to add to your troubles. Stay out of respectable academia, keep your nose clean, and I'll keep this to myself."

 

Abby was shaking when she got back to the rental car. Prudence would have dictated staying overnight before getting on the road, but she wanted to be gone, away from the shame and the temptation to go back and shout, "This is legitimate. This is important. We should all be studying this, you old codger" in Anderson's face.

The traffic thinned out, until the only people driving across Pennsylvania were a few long-haul truckers and Abby. She drove, her hands aching from gripping the wheel too tightly. The revenge fantasy about Anderson being chased around his house by ghosts he didn't believe in only lasted an hour. It started to sink in that she wasn't going to be a professor, and that idea was enormous and unfamiliar. She didn't want to think any more right now; she just wanted to be home.

She made it back to New York and got the car dropped off after 1am, running on fumes, determination, and the aching desire to burrow in Erin's arms and hear that it would all be okay.

Erin was still up, frowning at a laptop in the kitchen and drinking tea. She looked up, distracted by the paper Abby could see on her screen, and only after Abby kissed her clumsily and desperately and grabbed her hand did she really focus enough to say, "Hey, what's wrong?"

"I'm out at CMU. I don't get to be a professor." Erin's eyes widened in shock. Abby stumbled through what felt like a confession as she described what had happened; she couldn't sustain the outrage she'd felt walking off campus. Erin stared, her eyes huge and round and frightened, and Abby could almost see her brain working through the implications of Abby's disgrace.

Abby stared back. Something felt wrong, beyond the base wrongness of this entire day. She had been holding out for the last six hours to hear Erin tell her it was going to be okay, but the six minutes after Abby stopped talking felt longer than the entire drive had been. Sometime while Abby was speaking, they had dropped hands, and Abby was wondering when Erin was going to say something, when Erin was going to take her hand again, until she suddenly wondered if either of those things was going to happen at all, or if Erin was going to just stare at her appalled for the rest of time.

Abby squeezed her eyes shut briefly, and the motion seemed to unfreeze the scene. "No," Erin finally said, her determination showing through in her voice, "I have to do this postdoc, I have to prove that I'm right and the naysayers are wrong. I can't fail. I'm sorry."

Erin stopped short, as if she was playing her own words back to herself and had finally understood what they meant. She stared at Abby for a long moment, and then she swallowed, visibly, then turned and left the apartment. Abby sat at the table for a long time, her pulse thudding in her ears and in her sore fingers as her body belatedly realised it was time to panic. Physiology was overrated, though — Abby's brain knew that it was way too late to panic.

That bare, determined "I'm sorry" was the last thing Abby heard from her oldest and best friend for a decade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from SJ Tucker's "Cheshire Kitten (We're all mad here)."
> 
> Ping me on Tumblr if you want to talk about how awesome Abby is, or if there's not enough Tolan love in this story and you want to prompt me and I'll try to make it up to you, or for more or less any reason related to obsessing about this canon. I'm username letzan over there.


	2. Holtzmann

The months following the Decade of Erin are not ones Abby is going to feature prominently in her memoir (always assuming the Ghostbusters eventually became world-famous and Abby even wants to write a memoir). She only ever thinks about them with a grimacing awareness that she'd been stupid and lucky and things could have ended much worse.

Abby doesn't sleep at all the night Erin leaves, and drags herself outside in the grey Manhattan morning, ostensibly to get food but really because she can't stand to sit inside that apartment any longer. She wanders for hours, walking to a diner 30 blocks away instead of taking the subway, eating some sort of breakfast food she can't focus on even as she is ordering it, buying clothespins and lightbulbs at a hardware store, and stopping to watch teenagers juggle clubs in a park on the way back.

She opens the apartment door and discovers with a start that Erin has been there, has been and gone. Her room is empty of clothing and books, her posters are gone from the walls, and keys to the front door, the inside door, and the deadbolt have been pushed through the mail slot and are lying on the mat.

So. Erin isn't coming back. Abby hadn't fully understood this before, but it's very clear now. And here Abby is, in New York with no job, no contacts except some grad school friends of Erin's (whose names Abby knows, but she has no aptitude for connecting with people on non-science topics, and she is sure they don't consider her a friend), and a sublet running out in a month.

Abby gets out a steno pad and writes "Problems to Solve" at the top of a page in her messy efficient handwriting. She lists finding a job, finding a place to live, and what to tell her parents. Then she instinctively adds "Next steps for placing spectral force in Grand Unified Theory w/o access to theoretician or lab?" Writing that stops her short. She can't even think about Erin, it hurts too much, but she can think about everything she has just lost in her research, how far back this puts her, how much she might never discover that 36 hours ago she assumed she would. She cries for hours, and after that she can't look at the list of Problems to Solve again.

August slides by in a fog, and without really thinking about it she gets a storage unit for her stuff, and calls up the least intimidating of the grad school acquaintances to ask for crash space. She spends a lot of time in the library, nominally doing research but she can't focus. She should probably go home, but she is still lying to her parents about how bad things are and why she hasn't left New York yet, and conversational evidence still has them at "a little worried" and not yet to the point of "demanding information."

The acquaintance makes noises that it might be time for her to move on, to be replaced by another acquaintance with another couch, to be replaced by nothing. (Abby doesn't think about protesting. These aren't close enough friends to need to hear her troubles. Also she doesn't think she could take someone else backing away like Erin had, as if her failure was contagious. Better to just disappear than risk that.) Her first night without a home, Abby stays up in a diner, guzzling coffee and picking at hash browns while trying to make a list of shelters and short-term housing options.

The second evening, the sky is threatening rain, and Abby hasn't actually contacted any of the short-term housing people, so she is rushing a bit to try to get to one of the shelters on her list (Do shelters close? At a time? She sort of thinks they might) when she is distracted by voices. There are always hundreds of voices in earshot in Manhattan, but for some reason the two men standing on a staircase catch her attention.

"...sure, but it's just a theory," one of them is saying.

"Stop being modest," his companion responds. "I couldn't find a flaw in your proof, and I looked hard. This is going to make your career."

Abby wonders what field the men are in, and what they are talking about. Curiosity makes her look up and catch the intense look the guy who couldn't debunk the proof is giving his friend. The love and respect she thinks she sees between these strangers catches her off guard, and she ducks down an alley without thinking just so she won't have to look any more.

She sits next to a dumpster, shaking, suddenly caught flat out by the awareness that she is never going to be a scientist again, is never going to have a friend or a colleague or a lover like Erin again. She stares across the alley without seeing anything, and when the sky opens up with a clap of thunder, she doesn't even notice it.

  


The next time Abby is fully aware of herself, she is somewhere she has never seen before, a ratty couch in a small studio, with electronic junk on literally every surface not excluding the rest of the couch. She is covered in mismatched blankets, and she gradually realises she is really cold. The room is occupied by someone she has also never seen before, a woman with a shock of blonde hair on top of her head, who is wearing a vest over a t-shirt and looks young enough to be an undergrad. The woman is moving around the studio at a blurred enthusiastic pace that makes Abby dizzy.

Abby clears her throat. "Umm, hi. Where am I?"

The blonde maybe-undergrad turns and grins. "In my bedroom. You are the envy of all right-thinking women everywhere." ( _Definitely_ an undergrad, Abby thinks.) The woman pauses, then continues more soberly. "It probably wouldn't have hurt you to get checked out by a hospital, but you didn't look like you could afford a hospital, so I took my chances. Maybe have some soup? It's warm, at least."

She places a mug on a stool in front of Abby, who considers it, focusing methodically on not dropping the spoon. It is some sort of off-brand Campbell's bottom-of-the-barrel variant, all salt and no nutrients, and it is the most delicious thing Abby can remember tasting. She drains the mug and feels a little more human.

"Can you stand up?" her hostess asks, and Abby tries it, a little wobbly, but not too bad.

"Good. Go ditch your wet clothes and take a shower; the bathroom's down to the left. You're probably not going to die of exposure, but why risk your health? Or my furniture."

Abby nods, the reasonableness of the instructions making her feel more steady. The bathroom is filthy and the shower has no setting between freezing and scalding, but once she is done and dressed in a bathrobe the probably-undergrad scrounged up, she feels much better.

"I don't know what the protocol for this is," Abby begins, returning to the living room. "I guess I introduce myself? Maybe you know; do you rescue people from alleys a lot? Well, anyway, I'm Abby Yates."

The other woman smiles again, showing her teeth. "I'm Holtzmann. And, no, I don't, but you chose a night when there were zero pickings at my favorite dumpster. Luck, really; if I'd found a stack of capacitors, I would have left you to your fate."

"What do you need capacitors for? Are you an electrician?" (Surely not, Abby is positive the New York state electrical code doesn't allow dumpster-diving for parts, but it is the only thing she can think of other than student, and she doesn't want to offend the woman by guessing wrong.)

"Nope. Nuclear engineer." Abby raises her eyebrows. "Well, in training, I guess. I work in a lab in Midtown, and who knows what they think I do, but it gives me space to experiment." Hmm, not an undergrad after all, then, Abby mentally corrects herself.

"I was an applied physicist. Now I'm not anything." Abby thinks momentarily about what she could do working with an enthusiastic engineer, how that would change her plans, but she's too tired and sad to get very far with that train of thought, and anyway if she'd had a lab to offer, she wouldn't have been out in an alley needing this woman to save her life, would she? Oh, right, that.

"Thank you for rescuing me. I appreciate it," Abby says as briskly as she can manage. She feels she ought to be off and leave this woman to her day, but her clothes are still drying in the bathroom and she's almost unbelievably exhausted, and she just doesn't know what the protocol is. She pictures her mother saying, "You really need to be more social and work on etiquette, Abby, so that when you are cold and tired and owe your life to a stranger, you will know what to say," and can't help giggling.

"What's funny?" Holtzmann asks.

"I've just never been very good at social situations," Abby mumbles.

"Me neither," says Holtzmann, with that infectious grin again. "But I promise not to molest you in your sleep. This time." She pauses, then continues in a rush. "And I can see you thinking you should go, but that's bull, you obviously don't have anywhere to go and even less idea how to live on the street than I do, and you would eventually die and waste my effort of giving you soup. And you need to sleep." She knocks her electronics off the rest of the couch with a series of small crashes. "Lie down. We'll talk more tomorrow."

Abby drifts off to sleep, thinking this ought to be more awkward than it is, thinking maybe she has stopped falling, maybe something will have to get better.

* * *

Abby can excuse herself for mistaking Holtzmann for an undergrad --- she's not, but she is a student (two years into a Ph.D. at Rutgers, to which she takes the train whenever she needs to show up on campus) and she is 20 years old.

Holtzmann is about as eccentric as Abby would expect from someone who went to college at 15, started dual-tasking grad school and commercial lab work at 18, and didn't make any friends either before or after either experience. She's talkative, but doesn't seem to talk to anyone in particular on a regular basis, and Abby sees no evidence that she dates or sleeps with anyone.

She invites Abby into her studio, finds her a spare key, and as far as she's concerned, that seems to be the end of it. Abby knows she should move on, knows she's imposing on this stranger, but it still takes her a month of making a routine, familiarizing herself with the neighborhood, grocery shopping for Holtzmann's kitchen and cooking omelets and pasta on her stove, before she can start thinking about her own plans as more than a blank.

The first thing she figures out is that she still wants to come up with a theory of spectral energy. "The hell with Erin," she thinks, and she has to stop and cry after thinking it (bless Holtzmann for never asking about her emotional swings), but it feels good anyway. This is real and important, and no one in the world has the skills to research it that she has collected.

Dr. Anderson's threat stays with her --- she can't do her research in "respectable academia", or he'll publicize their book and ruin Erin's career too. (She never wonders why she's still protecting Erin. It's obviously what needs to be done.) So she makes a list of two-year colleges, trade schools, places that someone like Anderson wouldn't even consider when thinking about institutes of higher learning.

Abby tries out her pitch on Holtzmann, to get some feedback and to make herself less nervous about the idea of approaching even-borderline academics. She walks through the evidence for the existence of spectral energy, the proofs we have, the evidence we could get from experiments on the everyday world, the evidence we could only get from experiments in the presence of spectral phenomena (as yet unproved). Holtzmann stares at her, uncharacteristically quiet. For a moment, Abby is afraid she's going to be dismissive, but her eyes are shining, and Abby realises with a start that she's impressed. Impressed and maybe something else...

"Welcome back, Dr. Yates. I'm looking forward to seeing what you can get done." Holtzmann smirks, and Abby flushes under the intensity of those blue eyes.

  


Sixteen phone calls and interviews later, Abby finally fetches up at Higgins, where her pitch of "I'll teach a couple of classes and otherwise you'll never know I'm there" falls on receptive ears. It's not glamorous, but it's an office and a lab and inter-library loan privileges and a salary.

She assumes that when she starts at Higgins, she'll move out of Holtzmann's place immediately, but Holtzmann shrugs and says, "It's fine to wait. Make sure you're okay, make sure you're stable. I wasn't really using the couch anyway," and Abby's eyes prick when she realises how much she appreciates that reassurance.

Holtzmann turns 21, and insists that Abby take her out to a bar and buy her shots of rye. "If you're just now legal, when did you learn to like that rotgut?" Abby asks, but Holtzmann just smirks and doesn't answer.

She does, however, insist that Abby keep herself supplied with IPA after IPA, and she demands that Abby talk, and it's her birthday, so what can Abby do? She tells the whole story, about her interest in ghosts, about the asshole PI who tanked her academic options... about Erin. She can see Holtzmann's loyalty to Abby's side of the story, that she's preparing to make an enemy of this woman she's never met, for Abby's sake. It's touching, but it doesn't help.

"Look, in a lot of ways she had it harder than I did. She thought she could be a normal kid, that that's something that was stolen away from her because she saw a ghost. People like me never thought we were normal kids, we prepared to deal with it at a much younger age." Holtzmann gives a kind of half-grimace at that, and Abby has a sudden mental image of a small Holtzmann making elaborate pickle batteries and never talking to anyone. Probably Holtzmann never thought she could be normal either, and it just makes her that much more charming. But Abby feels so much sympathy for Erin, for her unacknowledged weirdness and her fear of rejection.

Holtzmann snorts. "You could let yourself hate her. She deserves it, and you'd probably feel a lot better." Abby shakes her head. She still loves Erin; she expects she'll always think about her and see that brilliant kid who was so hurt not to be believed. She knows what made Erin crack, and she can't forgive it right now, but she can't hate her either.

* * *

After Abby has been at Higgins for a month, she does start looking for her own place, and Holtzmann doesn't object, so Abby guesses she's passed some sort of eccentric-grad-student test of her own sanity. Or Holtzmann just wants to be able to store circuit boards on the couch again.

They don't see each other often over the next few years, but occasionally Holtzmann will stop by Higgins with a piece of gossip about her research, or Abby will head down to Holtzmann's neighborhood and they'll meet for drinks. Abby's references for most topics come from web searches, or from Higgins's slow and unreliable interlibrary loan interface (before she worked at Higgins, Abby had assumed that ILL was ILL everywhere, and she's annoyed with how often her journal requests take three months, or simply fail to make it into the system at all, how when she gives up and physically goes to another library, it's even odds that her card won't be recognized), so it's always a relief when she has a question that might even plausibly be in Holtzmann's wheelhouse and she can e-mail a human and get a response.

Holtzmann never shows the slightest discomfort with the fact that Abby's research is on spectral energy. It's not clear to her whether Holtz believes in ghosts, but the question is obviously not important to her --- Abby is managing her own project and Holtz is happy to consult.

Holtzmann's own research seems to be continuing apace. Most of the prototypes she describes, Abby is surprised someone is letting her build within 50 miles of a population center of any size, and she flits between ideas, never describing the same project more than once. Abby is sure Rutgers recognizes both the prestige they have coming from turning out a student like Holtzmann, and the danger to life and property of keeping her around, so she imagines they're keeping an eye on her and making sure she stays on track to graduate.

Abby notices other changes over time. Holtz's incessant pickup lines get steadily less awful. Her eccentric wardrobe starts to look more intentional. (She teaches herself a neat trick for tying a scarf as a necktie, and Abby makes her walk through the steps of how it's done several times, until she gets it but concludes it's not actually her style.) Abby is pretty sure Holtzmann is getting laid at least occasionally, and it makes Abby happy to think about her friend not being alone. But she never mentions a girlfriend, and none of this has any impact on the more-or-less constant frequency with which she hits on Abby.

They've been friends for about three years, and Abby's lab at Higgins has grown measurably in density and quality of gadgets (though not in results), when Holtzmann announces that she's graduating and has a job lined up at CERN, and takes Abby to a steakhouse well outside both of their usual budgets to celebrate.

Holtz is in an effusive mood, telling long stories about a fight Dr. Gorin had with the rest of her committee, musing about living in Switzerland. She's dressed conservatively-for-her in a men's button-down shirt and a green vest, the pendant she's worn since she started working with Gorin missing in favor of a pair of cufflinks with the same logo. Abby is abruptly aware of how attractive her dinner companion is, but she's much too comfortable to be bothered by that, settling into her chair to enjoy the food, the wine, and the view.

Over dessert, Holtz gives her a conspiratorial glance that Abby reads as weirdly nervous. "So, Dr. Yates, how about it? May I take you home?"

The pit drops out of Abby's stomach abruptly, at the intent look in those gorgeous eyes. She has never really considered the possibility that Holtzmann might actually be interested in her, and, damn, for a second she really wants this. But. For all these years, she's still only ever thought of Erin. She might go home with an attractive stranger (not that any unsuspecting attractive strangers have wandered by and asked, mind you), but she could never do that to a friend, it would be too dishonest.

She mumbles, "no, I'm sorry," and Holtzmann frowns, but recovers almost immediately, switching to another topic. Conversation is barely strained, Holtz takes her arm comfortably as they leave the restaurant, and Abby almost wonders if she dreamed the whole proposition. But she doesn't think she could have dreamed that look, or the feeling, however brief and impossible to follow up on, of someone seeing her and wanting to see more.


	3. Higgins

Abby doesn't hear from Holtzmann for a few weeks after that, which she chalks up to some combination of them keeping some intelligent distance in their old age after her perhaps-awkward rejection of Holtzmann's proposition, Holtzmann being busy with her upcoming graduation and move and whatnot, and the fact that they often don't see each other for a month or two at a time.

Then her phone rings, mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. She doesn't recognize the number, but she doesn't usually get spam calls on her cell phone, so she answers. The speaker on the other end seems like a middle-aged woman, voice not immediately familiar.

"This is Abigail Yates, correct? I'm calling you because you're a friend of Jillian's." (Wait, a friend of _whose_? Oh, right, Holtzmann has some other name. With that context, the voice on the other end resolves into that of someone she's met once or twice when she's been dragged along to lectures and symposiums — it sounds like Holtzmann's advisor and mentor, Dr. Rebecca Gorin.)

"Yes, this is Abb...Abigail. What's up? Is Holtzmann okay?"

Gorin pauses. "She's fine, but there was a lab accident. Can you come to New Brunswick and pick her up? I'll need to release her to someone who knows her. Quickly... and quietly... would be ideal."

Well, that's mysterious as hell, and it's not like Abby didn't have work to do, but she owes Holtzmann at too deep a level to question this. So, fine. She cancels her office hours and hops on the regional rail to New Jersey. She's worried — she knows from experience that unexplained summons from permanent faculty are never good news — but has no idea what to expect.

  


Abby arrives on Rutgers's campus and echo-locates Dr. Gorin, who fills her in tersely, but enough. Holtzmann's particle experiments led to an explosion that damaged half a floor of a campus building and left a postdoc in the hospital, extent of injuries unknown. Gorin thinks her errant protege could face jail time if the full story became known (it sounds from her voice like Gorin halfway thinks Holtzmann _should_ go to jail, but isn't willing to commit to some other mind making that call). She wants Holtz to go to ground so she can run damage control, see what can be salvaged.

When Abby sees Holtz, she understands why Gorin didn't just put her on the train — she looks halfway in shock, face blank. Abby would bet she never fucked up this badly before; for all her bluster, Abby would bet _a lot_ Holtzmann had never injured anyone other than herself before. When Abby reaches for Holtzmann's hand, she flinches and draws back, but she's able to coax her out of the building, onto the train, back to Abby's apartment, onto Abby's couch.

Abby isn't sure what to do for her friend — thinking about what she would want herself, she offers Holtzmann tea, and, a little self-consciously, soup, but Holtzmann rejects both. She doesn't say a word the whole time, and Abby is sure she doesn't sleep, but at least she's safe, and they can wait to find out what happens next.

  


What happens next is a series of slow steps, at the end of which the injured postdoc is still Prognosis Unknown, Holtzmann is not going to jail, Holtzmann is also not going to CERN or anywhere else she had applied, and Holtzmann is going to be Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, Ph.D., though without ceremony and (Abby gathers) possibly only because Gorin threatened to resign.

"Your timing is awful," Abby chastises, as she lets Holtz self-medicate at the dining room table with a bottle of bourbon. "First walk for your diploma, then detonate your own career, didn't you learn anything from my experience?" Holtzmann attempts a smile, but it looks like a death mask and Abby sends her to bed. It's obviously going to be a few days before she's willing to talk, and if Abby doesn't miss her guess, it'll be a few lifetimes before she's willing to talk about the accident.

  


Abby checks with her department at Higgins about whether Holtzmann can have a job before she checks with Holtzmann about whether she wants a job — these three-way negotiations are always about picking the party you'd rather disappoint, and Abby helped eight students get transfers to four-year colleges last year, and is consequently in pretty good shape with the administration. She makes noises about the likelihood that her friend can mentor in the machine shop a couple of times a week, and that seems to be good enough.

By the time Abby has the Higgins offer solid enough to bring to Holtzmann, she has gotten over her shock to all appearances, and is bouncing around like her usual self (though she hasn't actually left Abby's apartment). Holtzmann looks dubious about the job, but Abby rolls her eyes at her worries about Higgins's reputation. "Look, Rutgers was full of high-powered engineers and physicists, but did you meet a single person there you gave a shit about working with other than Gorin? Didn't think so. In that case, what does it matter?"

She doesn't say, "At Higgins, you can work with me." She'd love to believe that's a draw, but it's just hard to tell with Holtzmann.

She does say, "It'll get you back in a lab, and that's really what's important, right? Assuming you want to go back to a lab...?" and glances at Holtzmann inquiringly. She has to talk sometime, right?

Holtzmann snorts, and shrugs as if she is rejecting the paralysis and uncertainty of the past few days. "Of course I do. Yeah, sure, I'll take the job. And thanks."

"So you're okay?"

"Sure. I fucked up. I shouldn't have, and I know what I did wrong. What more is there to say?"

"What does that... So does that mean you'll do something different next time? Something safer?"

"Definitely," Holtzmann says easily. "I won't fuck up." Abby, who has lived her life in the lab by safety protocols and post-mortems of near misses, would find this a hard statement to swallow from anyone else. But Holtzmann is Holtzmann; her genius, her confidence, her lack of respect for other people's protocols, is all part of a package. If Abby has to take or leave all of that, she has no question which she'll pick.

* * *

Holtzmann waltzes into Abby's lab at Higgins and assumes she can overturn 35% of what Abby was doing within five minutes of arriving. The first month is exhausting — Abby can't relax at all in the lab, she's constantly running into tables that Holtzmann has rearranged, finding that the PKE meter which used to be directly connected to the recording station has now been moved halfway across the room and she has to bring it back, rescuing the infrared array from the shared storeroom where Holtzmann junked it.

She finally snaps, "If you disagree with the way I do everything, why did you agree to work here?"

Holtzmann looks surprised. "No, of course I don't, but I don't know my way around yet. If I move anything important, you'll tell me, and then I'll know why it's important."

Abby feels bewildered by this logic. "Couldn't you just ask? That seems less exhausting."

"Well, you're not always here..." Holtzmann says, but Abby is pretty sure Holtzmann is doing things the hard way on purpose, that she likes her method of testing the system's operating parameters by perturbing things and seeing which changes take and which ones are forced back into their original configuration by Abby's will.

Abby sort of hates it, she feels like she's constantly defending every theory and priority she ever had. _It's easy to criticize when you just walked in here and don't have anything on the line,_ she thinks, but the first time she questions one of Holtzmann's enthusiastic suggestions, Holtzmann just shrugs and says, "Yeah, you're right, we probably can't run power drops in the floor if the sprinkler system is that overenthusiastic," so Abby guesses it's equal-opportunity. She tries, marginally successfully, not to feel like she's being called an idiot 20 times a day.

The lab is also a lot more social with more than one person in it. Holtzmann plays CDs Abby hasn't heard, and lipsyncs along to Abby's 80s pop while soldering. Holtzmann brings in junk food labelled in Chinese from a grocery store she passes on the way to campus. Holtzmann chatters about things she found out online, what she's working on, what Abby is working on.

After a month or two of this, Holtzmann seems to be satisfied with the layout of the lab, and Abby has to admit that she's happier too, that in between the constant arguing they've sorted out what Abby's top three detection system priorities are, and miraculously Holtzmann has somehow bought into them as well. The constant low-level tiredness of having her routine disrupted by an extrovert is starting to fade, as this new louder routine forms. She kind of likes it.

Abby also eventually figures out that Holtzmann is bullshitting about her skills at least 50% of the time. Not at the base level --- obviously, the woman is a genius and has an extremely solid physics and engineering background and a list of successful accomplishments to her name. But when Abby asks "Can you make a portable containment field?" and Holtzmann says "sure, why not?," this doesn't mean Holtz has ever done that before or even has a plan of attack in mind, just that she's operating from a base expectation that dudes can shield nuclear material, so how hard can it be? And she'll trust her brains or maybe a reference or two to fill in the details when she needs them.

The best (or maybe worst) part is that she pulls it off every. damn. time. It's so different from Erin's careful deliberation and cross-checking before proposing a theory, from Abby's own compulsive need to hedge on the part of an explanation she hasn't worked out to her satisfaction. Holtzmann's careless confidence gets stuff done. Especially after the business at Rutgers, Abby's opinion stood firm at "When she's wrong, it will get us all killed" for a long time. So she's startled to find that idea replaced with, "This is so much fun to watch." Does this mean Abby is becoming a mad scientist by proxy? This all seems very dubious.

  


Once the lab is somewhat reorganized, they set about working towards their goals in earnest. Abby makes sure they start with some axioms. Ghosts exist. They have energy signatures that look like _something_ modern physics knows how to work with. If those things aren't true, they're not going to succeed, and Abby's only shot at making her mark at a scientist is to succeed at this. So any time spent questioning those assumptions is time wasted.

She continues to have no idea whether Holtzmann believes in ghosts. Heck, some days she has no idea whether Holtzmann believes in modern physics. She never asks if Abby has any evidence, just throws herself into the latest project or three with frightening enthusiasm. As far as Abby can tell, Holtzmann is involved in this entire project just for fun. As time passes and the Rutgers incident must surely be fading from institutional memory, Abby wonders if Holtzmann will realise she could go get a prestigious job anywhere, if she'll pack up her tools and be gone one day. But somehow she's always still there.

Their lab grows from tables of gadgets and a few stray spools of copper wire, to banks of equipment, all of it working (they're pretty sure), all of it scrounged on almost zero budget. Holtzmann really does have impressive success dumpster-diving, and also trades labor for parts at a Radio Shack in Queens, and also occasionally steals from the machine shop. Not that Abby is judging. Much.

The new order is great, but Abby still misses Erin fiercely. Holtzmann has no interest in whiteboards — she'll stand patiently for maybe as much as 30 seconds while Abby tries to walk her through a proof, then she'll shrug "probably?" and be back to her bench. Obviously Holtzmann _uses_ equations — she has to measure things, and there's no magical alternative to the entirety of learned history about how physical objects work. But they're just tools, another set of wrenches, and wrenches already exist, no need to invent more.

Abby _does_ need to invent her own wrenches, though — she's working in an area of physics that legitimate academia doesn't acknowledge. If the existing theoretical models are too far off-base, nothing will save her, but if they just need a little bit of work to shoe-horn into this new application, Abby needs to personally do that work. She is not used to being in that position, it feels like way too much responsibility. She stares at her whiteboard full of equations and pictures Erin striding into the room, hair swinging as she glances over the board for eight seconds and then goes straight to the place where Abby made the suspect logical leap and circles it in red. It makes her want to cry, but instead she has to be a grownup and spend an hour staring at the board, trying to find the mistake that Erin-in-her-head tells her she already knows is there.

  


Holtzmann wanders over to investigate why Abby has her head in her hands. "Gah, I just can't do this." Abby knows she's whining and feels sheepish, but she is thoroughly frustrated. "I need someone who can figure out the math."

Holtzmann glances over the whiteboard dismissively. "I'd like nothing more than to get myself off against a whiteboard while showing you how clever I am. But my way wouldn't get your proof done."

"Holtzmann. That's not helpful," Abby says, a little amused but not at all tempted to show it.

"Someday, you will see that I am right about everything," Holtzmann observes, slouching against the wall and smudging Abby's pen marks, with a leer that reminds Abby that anger and arousal have the same root physiologically, don't they?

"I'm serious, that's not helpful," Abby snaps. "You don't like theory, fine, you have that luxury. I don't. I'm trying to figure out whether spectral energy is more likely to be detectable closer or further from dense population centers, so that we don't have to take 1-inch granularity measurements of the entire earth. Which you don't want either. And I need this proof in order to do that, and I need to sort it out entirely by myself, and apparently I need to do that while you make fun of at me."

"Hey, sorry," Holtzmann says, sitting across from Abby and putting her elbows in the pile of papers on Abby's table. "I know you're the one who makes the ghost trains run on time here. We should get you some more collaborators."

"How?" Abby asks, "You may recall I'm banned from academia for life."

"By who? Didn't that asshole at CMU retire last year? You could do anything. Put out a call for papers in the AIP newsletter. Or..." Holtzmann's eyes shine, the telltale and frightening sign that she is about to come out with what she will assert is an unusually good idea, "you could publish the book."

"What? No I couldn't." Abby has settled mostly-comfortably into academic pariah-hood, and it had honestly never occurred to her that Anderson's retirement could be anything more than an excuse for a bit of schadenfreude. She buried the thought of ever doing anything with the book a long time ago.

"Sure you could. I've seen your draft, it was pretty much ready. We've been working hard, but none of the foundational stuff has changed, has it? And it's good. Get it out there and a new theory nerd will come to you."

"But, what about Erin? It's her book too." Abby is overwhelmed by a rush of enthusiasm at the idea of finally, finally seeing this project through. But surely she can't...

"You don't even have any idea what Erin is doing, do you?" Abby shakes her head no; she has refused every day for eight years to so much as google Erin's name, that's how much she doesn't want to know about Erin's comfortable successful life without Abby in it. "She could be dead." (Abby winces.) "She could be on Mars. She could have abandoned her wife to hike the Appalachian Trail. You don't know. And it doesn't matter. She left you. It's your book now. Go display your ghost plumage on the internet and show off so we can settle down with a nice girl who likes to talk about convergent series."


	4. Ghostbusters

Abby publishes the book, but she doesn't expect much to come of it. It certainly never crosses her mind that she's setting into motion a chain of events which will lead Dr. Erin Gilbert to walk through her door, angry, self-righteous, and utterly herself.

Abby has no idea what to say to this Erin who can waltz in without so much as an "excuse me for breaking your heart," with a list of demands once again designed to protect her precious reputation. Abby will never have tenure, and Erin knows perfectly well why, though perhaps she has simply forgotten. Abby almost never wastes time getting mad at Erin-in-absentia, but with Erin-right-in-front-of-her she is so angry she barely trusts herself to speak.

Fortunately, she can leave most of the conversational heavy lifting in the care of Holtzmann, who has clearly taken a goal of making Erin as uncomfortable as humanly possible. By dint of personality and long practice, Holtzmann is very very good at this task, and Abby has rarely been so grateful to her simply for existing.

 

But then abruptly everything changes. They see a ghost. Excuse me, pause that for a second. They SEE A GHOST. In one way or another, Abby has been working towards this for almost twenty years, and everything that she needed yesterday to make it happen (including that theoretical physicist), she needs a hundred times as much today. The fury Abby has felt since Erin walked through the door is still there. She wishes she could tell Erin to go away forever, say something really awful, hurt her back. But that's another luxury Abby doesn't have.

She needs Erin. They have work to do.

* * *

Things settle into a new shape. Erin helps out around the lab, and it is nicer to have her back than Abby cares to admit, but seeing her every day is still difficult.

Holtzmann and Patty conspire to keep the whole thing from collapsing on itself, especially at first. Holtzmann's ongoing campaign to annoy Erin to distraction amuses Abby and helps her keep things together. And Patty is just herself, sane and present and loud — she's not here for petty bullshit, and that makes everyone else a little more ashamed to snipe at each other too often.

Abby can't initially place Patty's interest in this gig — she's not a scientist, she doesn't have a theory or a reputation riding on spectral energy, and their ongoing demands for information about New York history must be all take and no give from the point of view of Patty's intellectual interests.

Then she remembers that the advent of actual ghosts have taken this from scientific concern to public safety concern. Patty is involved because she is worried that New York may not survive what's happening to it, and thinks she can do something about that. In some sense, Abby considers Patty a kindred spirit because of her goal-oriented behavior, but Patty's goals are so useful it puts Abby to shame.

 

They continue to gel as a team. They all learn how to fire proton guns (the parabola has to intersect the target's exact location? This is not easy no matter how many calc 101 labs you've proctored!). Holtzmann starts building things people actually use, sometimes minutes after she finishes building them, and enters a new level of enthusiasm for her work (and satisfaction with her own skills). Abby tries to analyse the gleam in Holtzmann's eyes, looking for the tell-tale signs that Abby should stand aside and let someone else field-test this one first. But she loves Holtzmann's confidence even when it gets them all thrown around a bit.

 

Abby and Erin work together, to do the work that needs to get done. They jump into old familiar patterns, they finish each other's sentences, they fill whiteboards. But Abby can't let herself be comfortable. Erin showed up because she wanted tenure, not because she wanted to see Abby. Erin stayed because she lost her alternative, not because she wanted to work with Abby. Unless Abby is itching to get hurt again, she needs to remember that.

 

They trap their first ghost, and they're back in the lab hyped up on adrenaline when Martin Heiss stops by for his visit. Abby can see Erin step back into her usual need-to-be-recognized pattern; that signature is worn like a groove into Abby's brain.

Abby says "It's easy to walk in here and criticize when you don't _do_ anything," and she's venting at Heiss, but she's also trying to get Erin's attention, trying to remind her that they need to get the work done. They can't afford to risk their results just to antagonize this guy.

But Erin is out of reach; she springs the trap because she can't bear to swallow her pride in front of this one useless damn guy. Abby is too slow to stop her because Abby is distracted by the focus in Erin's eyes as she prepares to make her point. Abby has always loved watching Erin when she has something to prove.

What's new, though, is the sense of entitlement that Erin Gilbert does not have to be made a fool of. Maybe that's always been there and Abby never noticed, but she notices now, and she kind of hates it.

Of course, it's easy to complain when the guy is killed for all of their sins (his own not exempted, mind you), and that becomes yet another thing they have to clean up before they can get back to figuring out where all these ghosts are coming from.

Abby sits in the mayor's office and models the right words, "The important thing is that we be able to continue our work," and manages to remind Erin that this is correct, and Erin agrees, yes, of course. But Abby can tell from Erin's voice that it's lip service, or maybe just a bit of shock at having contributed to a man's death.

For Abby, the important thing isn't staking out a position or defining herself — it's getting the work done, and if she needs to make compromises to get the work done, then that's what she needs to do. Erin will never see it in those terms, and some days that just makes Abby's life harder.

* * *

Abby's working relationship with Holtzmann isn't like that at all. Holtz is violently enthusiastic to get stuff done, and she and Abby keep working and arguing and building, cheerful and effective even as they start to piece together Rowan's plan and get an inkling of how high the stakes really are. But a little spectral possession could throw a spanner into any friendship.

Rowan uses Abby's body to stand too close to Holtzmann, smiling into her eyes without blinking, and Abby panics and just thinks, "No. Dammit."

Around the psychic noise of the malevolent jackass in her head, Abby curses herself fervently for every pass of Holtzmann's she deflected, every clumsy, crude, or charming line she turned down. Because if she'd ever said yes, if they had kissed, if they had made out in the lab, if she'd had the good sense to go home with Holtzmann after that memorable steakhouse dinner, then Holtzmann would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that _this is not Abby_. Abby doesn't call her Jillian against her wishes, Abby doesn't stand too close and stare with a creepy serene smile.

And Holtzmann wouldn't right now be babbling and flustered and caught off-guard by the possibility of having netted a fish, she would be _preparing for battle with the evil entity two feet away from her_. Abby strains everything she can think of, but apparently possession-by-ghost is a situation devoid of handles she can use to regain control. If Rowan manages to hurt Holtz, if he... if he kills her (and he's obviously trying), Abby will never forgive herself for having kept her mouth shut.

It doesn't come to that, thanks entirely to Patty (bless Patty). Abby steals a moment with Holtzmann before they rush downtown, cautiously putting a hand on her shoulder (and feeling slightly dizzy with relief when Holtzmann doesn't flinch from her touch) and saying, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Hey," Holtzmann says, easy as always even though her voice is still a little raspy from Rowan holding her by the throat, "It wasn't you. I know that. We're good." Abby kind of knows Holtzmann is telling herself that it wasn't really Abby who stared into her eyes, who seemed to be about to say yes to a very-frequently-asked (though usually only half-intended?) question. And Abby wants to say, "No, wait, it's more complicated than that, let's talk," and almost has the sheer courage-born-of-terror to do it, but there's no time, they have to save the city, so she contents herself with hugging Holtz, hard and fierce, and whispering "I'm just glad you're okay" into her shoulder, before they suit up and head out.

* * *

They head out into a mess — the city needs saving in a very immediate way, and everything starts moving fast and doesn't _stop_ moving fast until the moment Abby pushes Patty out of harm's way and Rowan grabs her and she is falling...

After that, it feels like she has all the time in the world to think, "Well, fuck." Because yes they were right about ghosts, and yes she personally mostly made this project happen, and yes she's sure the surviving Ghostbusters will find a way to name a theorem after her or something (Abby has faith that Holtzmann will have some say in this, and will insist on a viciously terrible pun), but none of that seems important. Abby wants to live. She wants to go out and celebrate saving the city, she wants to collaborate on more theorems, she wants to test more gadgets, she wants to make more discoveries, she wants to kiss Holtzmann, heck, it's her impossible fantasy, she wants to kiss Erin one more time.

But she is not going to get any of those things today. Instead the reward for insisting that the work get done is going to be a long drop to a lake of plasma (or something? Abby wonders nervously if it has a surface tension like water, or what), and then nothing. Abby falls towards this mind-boggling lake that human eyes have never seen before, and all she can feel is disappointment.

Then suddenly, impossibly, she is flying back up towards the portal, and Erin is there, and Erin is holding her and saying "I couldn't leave you again," and Abby get to live today after all, because of Erin.

And she's flustered, she can't think, because if Erin risked her life to save Abby, then that must mean everything is good, right? That must erase the years of abandonment and loneliness. Erin must be offering everything, and Abby must want what Erin is offering. Right? Erin is in love with her? She is in love with Erin? Given the current evidence, this should be the most certain thing in the world, but Abby isn't sure at all. They are literally flying, so why doesn't she feel like she's flying? Does the portal dimension break adrenaline or something?

Being rescued from certain death is very confusing.


	5. Home

In the days following the Times Square battle, Abby only gets more confused. Erin doesn't make a move, and Abby doesn't know why, and it's just awkward.

Well. They are too busy for awkward, so Abby will just have to ask Erin what she wants. Simple enough, right? She finds Erin alone in the lab above the Chinese restaurant a few days after the battle, Patty and Holtzmann having gone on a parts run (a mission which is complicated and slowed by their current lack of car). Erin doesn't notice Abby there, so she watches for a minute from the doorway as Erin makes notes about a paper, speed-writing tidily on a page and only occasionally chewing on the pen. The sight is a home she thought she'd never go back to, and now she gets to? Maybe?

But, dammit, if Erin wants to get back together like that, why hasn't she said something? Abby occasionally wonders if they were ever together like that outside of her mind — she never got introduced as a girlfriend or anything. Maybe Erin's impulsive jump into the portal was her move and now Abby has the next move? But... if Erin was waiting for Abby to make a move, wouldn't she be doing waiting things? Maybe Abby would look up at Erin to find Erin already looking at her? Or maybe Erin would be looking for excuses for them to be alone together? Abby hasn't noticed any of those things, so maybe Erin is not waiting. Abby's head aches, and in the end she goes back to the reception area without saying anything.

 

Abby keeps watching Erin uncertainly. She thinks about Erin making a brilliant observation, Erin covered in slime, Erin getting better at physical combat. She thinks about Erin arguing with Jen over whether the Ghostbusters are getting the recognition that is their due, and Abby having to talk her down and keep the peace so they can make sure their funding is safe. She thinks about the eight year gap in her knowledge of Erin, and everything Abby did and made in that time. She still doesn't know what she wants.

* * *

Abby is standing at the kitchen table, trying to concentrate on categorizing some equipment receipts for the mayor's office.

Patty stands up. "Quit pacing, girl, you're going to drive me out of my mind."

"What?" Abby says. She hadn't noticed she was pacing.

Patty sighs exaggeratedly. "If you're going to mope so loudly no one can get any work done, let's do something useful instead. Want to go for bagels?"

"What?" Abby says. "I'm not moping. But, sure, I like bagels."

Patty lets them walk in silence for a couple of blocks before turning towards (or perhaps on) Abby. "What's up with you lately? You're distracted and stressed."

"I'm not stressed. Things have been busy. I'm fine."

"You are stressed, girl. I have eyes. You've been looking at Erin like she's going to sprout wings or catch fire or something since y'all got back from the portal. So what's up?"

Abby is silent for another block, watching some students load a couch into a double-parked moving van. She considers not saying anything, but it would be awfully nice to talk to someone, and she trusts Patty. "Erin and I used to date, back... a long time ago. When she rescued me, I thought maybe she wanted to again. But I can't tell what she wants."

"What about you? You want to date her?"

"Of course!" Abby bursts out, "It's what I've wanted for years..."

Patty gives her a funny look. "Really?"

"I mean, yes, really, I think..."

"Not saying a word, here." Patty stops on the sidewalk and stands with her arms crossed, waiting.

"Well, no, to be honest, I don't know." Abby pauses. "I thought it was what I wanted for so long... it's like I can't actually tell any more. I love her, but she's, this is bad, I shouldn't say this..."

"Hey, we're friends, I don't judge. Say what you need to say, and I'll forget about it."

"She's selfish. Not all the time, but when she's afraid she might look bad or get made fun of, and I always have to cover for her. When we're friends, when we're colleagues, it's okay — it's just part of the whole Erin package, and it's not like I don't know why she does it. But if we were together again, it would be all the time."

Patty starts walking again, thinking this over. "Yeah, I can see that. Plus, you'd always be wondering if she was going to leave again for some reason, you'd always be looking over your shoulder for that to happen." (Dammit, Patty is too perceptive, Abby did not tell her that.)

"...yeah, that too," Abby says, her voice small.

"Hey," Patty moves over on the sidewalk and puts an arm around Abby's shoulder, a spontaneous hug. Abby leans into the touch, cheered by it. "You know you've already figured this out, right? You just need to tell yourself."

Abby blinks, processing. "Yeah... no... yeah... I guess I do know."

They walk the rest of the way to the bagel shop, and the conversation drifts. Abby plays the game where she points at a building and asks Patty to name the creepiest thing that ever happened in it, and Patty says, "Enh, stabbing," and makes a face. (Holtzmann also plays this game, and she and Abby have a standing bet as to whether Patty literally knows a fact about every building within a fifteen block walk of the firehouse, or if she just has a very good poker face. Abby's money is on "poker face," but she hasn't been able to prove it yet.)

They walk out of the bagel shop with half a dozen poppyseed, three everything, and some cinnamon raisin for Holtzmann's sweet tooth. They get lox because Patty loves it, and plain cream cheese because Erin will complain if the cream cheese has things in it, and chive cream cheese because Holtzmann will complain if the cream cheese doesn't have things in it.

Abby pictures them pleased by the treat, bustling around the firehouse kitchen with breadboards and knives, getting breakfast ready, laughing. She realises she's less tense, that the thought of what Erin is waiting for suddenly doesn't bother her at all. Maybe Abby really did know what she wanted to do all along; maybe she is the one who can make a choice, can choose to move on.

"Thanks, Patty," she says as they reach the firehouse, reaching up to touch her friend's shoulder as they get back to the place which feels like home.

* * *

The way Abby sees it, deciding she doesn't wish she was dating Erin should change nothing at all. So she's surprised after a while to realise how much it has changed. She is chatting with Patty about something credible Patty found in a book about haunting reports in Victorian buildings, and thinks it might explain a dead-end Holtzmann has been hitting in her work on ectoplasm-shielding material. She mentions the possible connection, sends Patty upstairs to compare notes, and is almost immediately rewarded by the sound of excited whooping and clattering.

Abby realises that she actually knows what every member of the team is researching this week, and has brain cells left over to think about how they might be related. Could putting down the awkward torch she'd been carrying for so long really have freed up that much mental space to carry other things? Abby Yates, orchestrator of the world's most advanced spectral energy research team (hey, they may be the world's only one, but it's still true!) is intrigued by this possibility, and settles back into work cheerfully.

 

Abby is skimming a paper on computational models of the nervous system when Erin comes in. She looks tense even by Erin standards.

"We should talk," she says. Abby raises an eyebrow.

"Possible. Evidence inconclusive so far. Whatcha got?"

"I, umm, asked Holtzmann why she tries to get under my skin all the time," Erin starts.

"Interesting. What'd she tell you?"

"She said I should ask you how the two of you met, but that it wasn't her business to tell me herself if you didn't want to. I realised she's right, I have no idea. But I, umm, I want to know. About you, about what I missed while I was gone."

Abby knows this is legitimately hard for Erin, that this is the closest she is likely to come on her own to an apology. Well, tough. "We were drug runners for three years. We don't like to talk about it because there are still warrants out for our arrest in West Virginia and Ohio."

"Abby..." Erin says warningly.

Abby didn't really want to have this conversation ever, and she wishes Holtzmann hadn't forced the issue (because now that Erin is thinking about it, she'll insist on knowing eventually), except for how much it warms her to know for sure that Holtzmann has been needling Erin for months _because of Abby_. She stares at her hands, and finally gets it out in a monotone.

"Look. I... kind of fell apart after you left. I wound up with no job and nowhere to live, and Holtzmann found me sort of literally on the street and took me in, and wouldn't let me leave until I had my act together enough to be stable. And I don't know what would have happened if she hadn't. So. That's all of it."

"Abby!" Erin is staring at her in disbelief, like it really never occurred to her that Abby might not have been just fine the entire time she was gone, like this new information makes her doubt her senses and want to be sure Abby is alive and whole right now. People (writ large) are mysterious, but Abby can read her old friend like a book, and has no interest in letting her suffer now. She puts a hand on Erin's arm, making sure she can feel the solid weight.

"It's okay. It was a long time ago, and you saved my life for sure at the portal, so we're square." Abby glances up at Erin, lets herself smile a little. "And I love you. I'm not _in_ love with you any more, but you'll always be my best friend."

"Hey, I love you too." Erin puts her hand over Abby's, squeezing her fingers. "I'm sorry for what I did to you." Abby had never thought Erin would actually say those words. "And I'm grateful that you let me back into your life."

Abby is glad she's not in love with Erin any more, that she no longer has to negotiate that stress and fear and disappointment. And yet after all that they're still here in the same room, still friends. And she's glad they've had this conversation, that Erin heard her say she wasn't in love any more and didn't blink, and that they've now talked about Erin leaving her, _and maybe that means they'll never have to talk about it again_. Erin smiles at her, a friendly much-younger-Erin smile, and Abby feels calm and happy thinking about their future as friends.

"Any chance you can convince Holtzmann to forgive me too?" Erin asks after a few minutes.

"What's in that for me? She turns hostility-by-flirting into an art form, and I have to get my entertainment somehow."

Erin sighs. "Well, okay. I'm grateful to her, anyway, for being there for you. And you know she's really impressed by you."

"Holtzmann is young and impressionable and easily wowed by even small equipment budgets and other such parlor tricks."

Erin looks at her. "No, I'm serious. She's blown away by your mind, by how you found a problem you wanted to solve and just beat away at it for years no matter what. I know she plays like she's totally independent and not paying attention to anyone else. But she could work anywhere, and she doesn't care about ghosts, really. So why is she here? It has to be because of you."

Abby blinks, feeling off-kilter from Erin's strange and suspect conclusion. But Erin has an amazing logical mind, her theories are always the best...

Erin grins briefly, obviously glad to be one-up on Abby again after the tension of this conversation. "Well, maybe you should ask her. My hypothesis is that she's into your brain, and maybe some other things too. You should find out." She grips Abby's hand, hard, for a moment, then smiles and leaves her, blushing, confused, and endlessly relieved.

* * *

Abby is not going to run off and ask Holtzmann about her intentions, but she's reminded that she does have some work news which will make Holtz happy, so that's a nice excuse to go look for her.

Abby finds Holtzmann in the kitchen, eating cheerios and milk with what look suspiciously like pieces of Butterfinger bars mixed in.

"So, Erin finished looking over my proof about the 'how to disrupt spectral nervous systems' thing..." Abby starts.

Holtzmann cuts her off. "Wait, don't tell me. She called it 'inelegant' and possibly also 'sloppy'."

Abby makes a face, "Yeah, yeah, she said it would take her five times as long to read as if I'd used more standard notation, but I think that's just griping, she's used to my conventions by now, and she went over it pretty quickly."

Holtzmann holds up a finger. "...and after all that, she didn't find a single actual problem with the math, but instead was forced to conclude that you are right, and thus I can confidently switch to a much lower power beam in the pistols as long as we use the correct frequency. Which is exactly what you figured out a week ago, so we could have skipped all of this scribbling and double-checking and have been building guns by now."

"Okay, so, you're basically right," Abby admits. "But, one, what do you think finding the correct frequency is? That'd be this math you are so keen to skip. Two, it turns out I was right, but I could have been wrong, and we could have gotten underpowered guns or ones that caught fire in the lab or something. That's why I do this."

"A fire in the lab! We certainly couldn't have that," says Holtzmann, entirely for effect because she and Abby both know she's set two (three?) lab fires so far this week, but none of those have been because of Abby's math, and that's important.

"But the point is, you" Holtzmann pokes Abby in the sternum for impact "were totally right, and you knew from the beginning that you were totally right. We will be discussing this point again. But now, out of my way, I have guns to build."

Holtzmann grins, looking at Abby for a second with a mix of admiration, pride, and unholy glee that makes Abby's breath catch, then heads for the lab, taking the steps three at a time.

* * *

The new guns work really well, and they handily trap a Class 3 in a Park Slope brownstone. Erin lives in Brooklyn and Patty has a book club meeting there, so Holtzmann and Abby draw the short straws and get to wait in bridge traffic to take their car and their ghost back to the firehouse.

Holtzmann runs the sirens to jump the queue and makes every turn 15mph faster than is at all reasonable, and Abby sits in the passenger's seat and wonders when risking her life in traffic started to feel so comfortable. She glimpses the boats in the East River and watches Holtzmann behind the wheel, and feels like she's coming home, feels like she's been home for a long time.

Abby realises suddenly that she knows what she wants, that she's not at all afraid to ask.

"Hey, Holtzmann. Can I take you home?"

Holtzmann stares at her for a moment, then her smile starts, slow and blinding, like looking at the sun after an eclipse. "I can say with perfect honesty that I thought you would never ask."

"Well, I am. Asking. That is, if you... jesus, Holtzmann, eyes on the road!" Clearly Abby _should_ have been afraid to ask because apparently they are going to drive off the Manhattan Bridge before she gets to hear the answer to her question. But Holtzmann gets the car back in its lane. She hasn't, per se, answered Abby, but she is humming tunelessly and grinning and glancing at Abby, and that's its own sort of answer.

They reach the firehouse and Abby gets out of the car, figuring they should take care of the Class 3 and their gear. Holtzmann saunters around the car, eyes shining, and mimes tipping a fedora.

"May I?" she asks.

"I asked, didn't I?" Abby says, and then Holtzmann kisses her, tentatively, like she's still not sure this is actually going to happen. That won't do — Abby is extremely sure this is going to happen. She grabs the lapel of Holtzmann's uniform and pulls her in closer, and Holtzmann's eyes widen, like something has just clicked.

Abby is used to Holtzmann's I-just-had-the-best-idea grin, but feeling it against her lips is different, and her stomach flips a little in anticipation. Holtzmann takes over, pressing her body against Abby's, and Abby feels every point of contact: the door handle of the Ecto-2 against her lower back, Holtzmann's belt buckle against her waist, Holtzmann's breasts against hers, Holtzmann's hands around her upper back, Holtzmann's mouth open against hers.

In the end, they don't make it back to Abby's place that night. Abby has to veto hooking up on the concrete floor of the garage, at which point the mattress in the third floor spare room seems like the best bet. Holtzmann's fingers investigate Abby's skin exhaustively, searching without obvious pattern for what makes Abby's breath catch. Abby has never been a fan of brute force algorithms, but she is rapidly revising that opinion now. She attempts a proof by counterexample, paying attention to what Holtzmann does most often and targeting the movement of her own hands against Holtzmann's breasts and stomach and back. Her hypothesis is rewarded.

Afterwards, Holtzmann curls up against Abby's back, her arm wrapped around Abby's stomach, skin on skin, more points of contact. Abby feels Holtzmann's body twitch minutely as she falls asleep. She hears the quiet whirring of machines from the lab downstairs in the firehouse, this home she built for this work she is doing with these people she loves. She feels the warmth of this woman who has always helped her be everything she can be, and maybe now the two of them will be even more. And in the end, it was Abby who made this happen for herself, this moment which is better than soup, better than unified field theory. This is what Abby wants to be when she grows up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from SJ Tucker's "Cheshire Kitten (We're all mad here)."
> 
> On the off chance you've made it this far, maybe you'll let me ramble a little longer.
> 
> I mostly wrote this for myself — it's the longest thing I've ever written by far, and I know it's a little narrativey in places, but hopefully it's nevertheless readable.
> 
> I have a lot of headcanon about the team not just working together during the movie, but having learned to work together over time, and having gotten from the "what am I even doing?" point in their careers to the "wow, check this out, I am kind of a badass" point through long effort and the passage of time. A lot of that revolves around Abby's undersung role in getting stuff done and setting things up so that by the beginning of canon, they actually have the ability to become the Ghostbusters. I'm more than happy to read or write Abby and Erin as an endgame pairing, but in this case I wanted them as the kind of will-we-won't-we friendship-with-bonus-tension where you know the answer is "won't," but it just takes a long time to get there.
> 
> I thought about cutting some of the Holtzmann-and-Abby in the lab stuff in chapter 3, because I know it's pretty narrativey and doesn't have enough jokes, but, umm, Holtzmann is amazing but if I actually had to work with her and try to share equipment and rules I'd go out of my mind in about 13 seconds, so I wanted to get some of that flavor from Abby's headspace. And Holtzmann is surely used to always being the smartest person in the room for better and worse — Abby gets her attention by doing something Holtzmann can't do, namely actually have the organizational chops to pull off a 20-year exploratory research project.
> 
> Look, I just really like these dorks, is all. Is that so wrong?
> 
> Ping me on Tumblr if you want to talk about how awesome Abby is, or if there's not enough Tolan love in this story and you want to prompt me and I'll try to make it up to you, or for more or less any reason related to obsessing about this canon. I'm username letzan over there.


End file.
